Thursday, March 20, 2008

18 Months

Limelet's 18-month-iversary was actually two days ago, but there it is.

Last night when I got home, TheLimey was heading to football [soccer], so I decided to take Limelet out during the brief period before his bedtime. A nearby shopping mall just opened a new play area for small children, and I wanted to try that out. It's ironic that they opened it just as spring is springing, instead of during the winter when we so desperately needed it, but--oh well. It might be useful for hot weather, too. Anyway.

So I fed, dressed, and packed him up, and we went to the mall. I don't know if he's ever been to one, come to think of it. Neither TheLimey nor I tend to frequent malls, and I can't remember the last time I went to one, so it's likely that Limelet hasn't been before. He was very impressed with the mall decor and music, and kept staring all around us murmuring, ohwow, ohwow. ohwow!

When we got to the play area, I was happy with it. It had a thigh-high padded wall all around it with soft benches, and soft carpeting inside. There area contained maybe five soft play structures/sculptures for kids to climb on and slide down. They were made of something like a yoga mat is filled with, but the plastic coating was shiny and slippery instead of matte. The play sculptures were in various shapes such as a bridge, a truck, a staircase, and (Limelet's favorite) an airplane. The airplane also had a little "cockpit" where the children could sit and turn a steering wheel. That was his favorite part of the whole place. They also had some toys built into the walls, which he also liked a lot.

The negative aspect was just basically a few older kids that were running around and around the enclosure at top speed and shrieking, completely not noticing when they bashed into anyone, whatever that person's size. I'm not sure those kids weren't all the progeny of one harassed-looking woman. At any rate, one of the dashing shriekers pushed another child who was climbing on the airplane, who then slid off and inadvertently kicked Limelet in the mouth. It hurt him, but amazingly he didn't quite cry. His little mouth crumpled up and he looked at the other child in a very wounded way, but he didn't quite get to the point of crying. And then he went back to playing and it was fine. (The rules stated that kids should be under 42" to use the area, but I think a few of them were stretching it.)

Limelet has started understanding words in one go more often, and he may be set to start generating them after hearing them once as well. Yesterday he learned instantly the new word "tuna" ("nuna"). He was also very upset that he couldn't play with the open tin of nuna as he really, really wanted to do. With a knife, of course.

Nuna is aurally closely related to his full term for n-n-nursie, which is neh-neh-nuna. (Abbreviated, it's just neh-neh.) Ha ha! I almost forgot. He just discovered in the mirror after his bath that he has little tiny "nursies", so now he pinches at them and asks, neh-neh?

When he wants to go to sleep at night (which occasionally happens), he climbs into my lap and asks for neh-neh. Then I announce that it's time to say night-night Daddy, which Limelet has translated to bah-bah-Didda. TheLimey would often say not only night-night but bye-bye Booboo, which Limelet has also taken to saying. Sometimes he gets Bs and Ds mixed up, though, so last night he said bah-bah Doodoo. (He doesn't know what doodoo is, though. We say poo.) After we sat down in the rocking chair to nurse, he uncharacteristically interrupted the nursing process and sleepily said, bah-bah Booboo. And then he went back to going to sleep. Just couldn't go to sleep while he knew he'd said it wrong, I guess.